One month from today, we will know what player the Pirates’ selected with the top pick in the draft.
Who that will be is still up in the air, even to them, at this point.
“Right now, we’re still in the ‘learn about the player’ mode,” Ben Cherington told me Thursday on the field at PNC Park.
It’s hard to underplay how important this draft and the top pick are for Cherington and the Pirates. Is there really much more they can learn in these last few weeks that they don’t already know?
As it turns out, yes, and much of it has to do with the challenges and changes from the past year. That applies for all rounds of this draft, including 1-1. Unlike last year, where Spencer Torkelson was the clear-cut choice for the Tigers’ first-overall pick, there isn’t an easy, unanimous choice for the Pirates to select.
The field has narrowed for that top pick, though. High school shortstops Marcelo Mayer and Jordan Lawlar have been connected to the Pirates for several months now. Fellow prep shortstop Kahlil Watson is also on the radar, according to MLB.com’s Jim Callis. All three are well-rounded, and it’s a matter of preference of which tool teams value the most for who gets picked when. Watson has more raw power. Mayer has a better potential hit tool. Lawlar is the fastest and slickest with the glove.
Outside of that trio, the only collegiate player who is getting any serious consideration at 1-1 is Louisville catcher Henry Davis.
That’s quite the departure from the hype surrounding this draft coming into the season, where the debate was mostly focused around Vanderbilt pitchers Jack Leiter and Kumar Rocker, and if they could be the first teammates to go off the board in the first two picks. Now it looks far more likely than not that the Pirates are taking a position player.
There are several reasons why the prep players have risen, the most obvious being it’s a good class. The other is that the COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t affected scouting of high schoolers as much as it did college players.
“Most of what a high school player is able to do in the 12 months leading up to the draft, they were able to do,” Cherington said. “Maybe not everything, but most of the showcases still happened last summer. The stuff they’d be doing in the fall -- workouts, interviews -- that still happened.”
There are also going to be more showcases for players in these final weeks leading up to the draft, including a league-sanctioned event in Cary, N.C., since the draft was pushed back from June to the All-Star break. The high school season is done, and a team can request either private information, meetings or showcases with players they wouldn’t normally be afforded.
That isn’t the case for collegiate players. The College World Series is still ongoing, so players on the best teams have playing commitments. Almost all conference play last year did not get underway. The summer leagues, most notably the Cape Cod League, were cancelled. For the Pirates, three of their top four picks last year -- first-rounders Nick Gonzales and Carmen Mlodzinski and third-rounder Nick Garcia -- had their draft stocks skyrocket because of their performance in Cape Cod in 2019.
“We didn’t target specifically from the Cape, but maybe that does say something about how that information matters,” Cherington said.
“We don’t want to punish a college player because he didn’t get to do that,” he added shortly after. “It’s not his choice that he didn’t get to play in the Cape. We don’t want that lack of information to in any way hurt a college player. We’re just trying to learn as much as we can about other areas.”
“Other areas” can include anything from advanced data to finding out more about a player’s decision making process and psychology.
Teams can track exit velocities and launch angles for hitters and compare them with metal and wooden bats. They can also track pitchers’ velocities, spin rates, spin efficiencies and movement, but that could fluctuate more over a full season’s workload. It’s why the Pirates value durability in potential pitching prospects, especially at the college level where workloads are more uniform.
“Guys that do that every year for three years, it does matter,” Cherington said.
This is probably the best answer for why Leiter has fallen out of favor over the course of this season. His freshman campaign was cut short last year because of the pandemic, and he missed a start this season because of what the school cited as fatigue. There were durability questions going into the year, and while he was one of the NCAA’s premier arms, he didn’t really shake that.
Because of the pandemic and the fact he is old enough to be drafted as a sophomore, Leiter is going to be drafted with about 200-250 fewer collegiate innings than almost any other pitcher taken near the top of a draft class.
“Of course, these guys didn’t get a chance to do that,” Cherington said. “It’s one of those things every team is going to have to deal with. There’s less information.”
For an organization that needs to get that pick right, it assumes a lot of risk. Cherington described two ways additional scouting can help: Being “more precise” or “less wrong.”
The Pirates will take college players throughout the draft, perhaps even Davis first overall, but if the goal is to get and use as much information, it makes sense why the high schoolers are rising.
MORE PIRATES
• Perhaps just as valuable as that first-overall pick is the Pirates’ massive bonus pool they have available to spend. Their pool is $14,394,000, the most out of any team this year, and they can spend an additional 5 percent without being penalized, giving them about $15.1 million with which to work. How they do that is up for debate. It’s a legitimate strategy to draft a player under slot with the first-overall pick -- which carries a value of $8,415,300 -- so they can go over slot at other points. Some notable examples include Carlos Correa with the Astros in 2012 and Casey Mize with the Tigers in 2018. To put it another way, they could sign a high school player who is considered a first- or second-round talent later in the draft by giving them more money, hedging the bet of that first-overall pick. Cherington said those discussions don’t start until the end of the draft process, but money is definitely a concern. “We know what our overall pool is and we know we need to get as much talent as we can from the draft,” Cherington said. “Right now, it’s about learning about select players and trying to be as right as we can be." Just to be clear though, Cherington said the Pirates are going to “spend every dollar” they can on the draft, adding shortly after that not taking advantage of this opportunity would go against what they are trying to do here. -- Stumpf
• While I was talking to Cherington during the visitor’s batting practice, Mookie Betts of the Dodgers, stepped into the cage. Betts is universally considered one of the best players in the game, and he is a product of old-school-over-analytical scouting. Cherington was a vice president and assistant general manager with the Red Sox when Betts was drafted in the fifth round in 2011, and the Red Sox watched him throughout his high school basketball and baseball careers to get to know him as a person over the two years leading up to that draft. “I don’t think that’s changed at all,” Cherington said about the importance of the human element in scouting. “It remains really, really important. What’s changed is there are more pieces of information.” That information includes both analytics and breakthroughs in player psychology, the latter of which is very important for the Pirates and was part of the reason John Baker, who was a mental skills coach with the Cubs, is now the director of player development. The Pirates obviously weigh data accordingly, and know players can build on those results as they develop, too. While there have been advancements in being “less wrong” in the scouting process through analytics, Cherington believes “there are still things that an expert scout can see that no one else can and we can’t do through other means.” -- Stumpf
PENGUINS
• Running an NHL team requires executives to make some difficult decisions, as do people overseeing most businesses. And while Brian Burke, the Penguins' president of hockey operations, can certainly come across as gruff at times, he acknowledged that team executives often have genuine affection and/or respect for particular players. Nonetheless, difficult as it might be, he added that those feelings have to be put aside when determining whether a player should be traded (or exposed in an expansion draft). "Yes, it is (hard), but that's your job," Burke said. "Some of those (positive traits) you just mentioned are part of the reason a player is valuable, too. It's not just that you like him. That adds value to a dressing room, too." Burke, Ron Hextall and other members of the front office are constructing the Penguins' protected list for the July 21 draft that will provide players for the new team in Seattle. Not surprisingly, players who aren't on it will be told why they were omitted. "Any player who's not protected will get a phone call from (Hextall)," Burke said. "That's just common courtesy. You call a player and explain why he's left unprotected." Politeness aside, there's a practical reason for doing that: The Kraken will be claiming just one player from the Penguins, so all of the others made available to Seattle still will be part of the organization. Besides, factors other than a player's value to the Penguins can play a part in the decision to expose him in the draft. "Sometimes, you leave a player unprotected -- a guy you really want -- because you think he'll sail through because of his contract," Burke said. "So you can afford to expose a guy who you really don't want to lose, but because of what he's paid, he's not likely to be selected. You have to explain that to the player." -- Dave Molinari
• It's too soon to know whether Samuel Poulin and Nathan Legaré are ready to challenge for spots in the NHL -- a lot of that figures to be determined by their performance, and that of others with whom they are competing, during training camp this fall -- but they certainly seem prepared to move on from junior hockey. As noted in this Taylor Haase story, their Val d'Or team lost in the final of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, but both were highly productive during the playoffs. Legaré, the Penguins' third-round draft choice in 2019, led the league with 14 goals and Poulin, their first-rounder that year, tied for second with 11. Success as a junior does not always translate to being a productive pro, but the Penguins have good reason for optimism with these two. -- Molinari
• This spring marked the 30th anniversary of the Penguins' first Stanley Cup championship -- they secured it with an 8-0 victory at the Met Center in Bloomington, Minn., in Game 6 of the final on May 25, 1991 -- but because of the pandemic, there was no formal recognition of it by the organization during the past season. It would, after all, have been pointless to bring back the members of that team (assuming such a thing was even possible, given the travel and group-gathering restrictions that were in place) so a ceremony could be conducted in an arena in which no fans were present. That doesn't mean the 1991 champs won't get the opportunity to relive -- and be celebrated for -- their accomplishment, however. The Penguins are expected to stage an event next season honoring both the 1991 club and the one that defended the Penguins' championship a year later. Although most of the key members of those teams were part of both title runs, a few -- including Rick Tocchet, Kjell Samuelsson and Hall of Famers Paul Coffey and Mark Recchi -- earned only one of those rings. -- Molinari
STEELERS
• Kendrick Green remains the Steelers' last draft pick who has yet to sign. The rest all signed weeks ago. But it remains a formality. According to Spotrac.com, Green, the 87th overall pick, can expect a base salary of $660,000 in 2021 and a signing bonus of $226,500 over a four-year contract. There might be some quibbling over the signing bonus, but the deal is going to wind up being the deal -- at least in that range. That signing bonus will be about $200,000 less than what tight end Pat Freiermuth, the team's second-round pick at 55, received. And it would be about $50,000 more than what tackle Dan Moore, the 128th pick, got. Maybe Green's agent can get a little more money out of the Steelers, but it won't be a lot. Green, by the way, has been at everything this offseason, so it doesn't really matter, anyway. He'll be signed by training camp. -- Dale Lolley on the South Side
• The Steelers liked undrafted rookie cornerback James Pierre enough last year that they gave him a $9,000 signing bonus following the draft. To give you an idea how badly the Steelers wanted undrafted cornerback Shakur Brown this year, realize that they gave him a $25,000 signing bonus. Per some research, that's their largest signing bonus given to an undrafted player since Ola Adeniyi got $15,000 to sign on the dotted line in 2018. In fact, it appears to be the most the Steelers have paid out to an undrafted player in the past decade. -- Lolley
• There's a chance the Steelers could hold some of their training camp practices at Saint Vincent College and some at Heinz Field this year -- and more than just the fan appreciation day they have held in recent years. Because of restrictions on how many fans they can have at camp and the real possibility the NFLPA will insist that every player has his own room at Saint Vincent -- meaning the Steelers will need 90 rooms for players instead of the 45 to 50 they would normally use -- the team isn't going to have as much dorm space as usual, either. It wouldn't be surprising if the team comes back from the Hall of Fame Game Aug. 5 and practices at Heinz Field, instead. Things went smoothly at Heinz Field last season, but the Steelers still see the value of being together in Latrobe. But if the players are put in two different dorms and in their own rooms, are they really together? -- Lolley
